Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - My Greatest Prison Scam

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

My Greatest Prison Scam

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. And I walk in, I sit down. I'm like, hey, what's going on? She said, well, I think we need to talk to you. She goes, why should I let you back into Ardap?

When you were here last time, you never took it seriously. And she said, I mean, give me one good reason why I would let you in. keep in mind. This chick is super smart. I remember thinking, bro, you better dig deep. You better come up with some shit. She's not going to let you back in. You're never going to see your mother alive again. You're in the middle of writing multiple stories. Your mom's, your mom is never going to be able to come see you. You're going to get moved. Like, you fucked up. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am doing, I want to say, part. 10?

It's part 11? This is part 11. Part 11, which is me in prison and how I basically managed to stay at the Loaf security prison so that I didn't get transferred to a camp where I just didn't want to go. But before we get into that, let me go ahead and mention that I paint paintings. I also have a Patreon account. If you'd like to join the Patreon and support, you know, videos like this. The third thing I'd like to also mention is that YouTube has a new feature,

which is the thank you button. And if you go to the bar where you see the little like thumb, you know, thumbs up, thumbs down, if you scroll that bar sideways, you'll see a button that says thank you and allows you to actually thank me for making videos and actually donate to the channel to support, you know, videos like this. And I think you can donate like $1.99 or $2.99. $4.99, $4.99, that sort of thing. And I appreciate anything you could donate. That's fine. All right.

So, here's where we're at. I was locked up in Coleman, with Coleman, you know, the prison, the low-security prison. And I'd gotten my sentence reduced twice. But my counselor came to me. So I had about two years left. Let's say two years. I forget exactly what the amount was. And I felt pretty secure because I'd done so much time at this point.

And I'd done about 11 years that I felt like I was for sure going to get a year worth of halfway house. Like I was like, oh, I'm definitely getting a year worth of halfway house. Like I knew guys that had done three or four years and gotten like a year halfway house. So I felt confident about that. And I felt like I had a year left. And my counselor comes to me one day and he says, no, it's not it's not a he. She says, she says, she says, listen. there's a big push to move people to camps

and your sentence was reduced and as a result of it being reduced I have to send you to a camp and I was like whoa whoa whoa you can't send me to a camp I'm going into Ardap now I didn't really want to go to Ardap Ardap does give you the Ardap program it's called the it's the residential

residential drug anyway it's the residential drug abuse program and so residential because what they do is they move you from whatever housing facility you're in like within the prison you're at a you're being housed in let's say b unit or a unit or whatever they move you into an actual unit that is just for uh it's it's just for people that are in that program so it's residential meaning you have to live there and it's a drug abuse program. Well, you know, it's a drug program, but really they don't really have it. It really has nothing to do with drugs. It's really about, it's really about criminal thinking and just thinking

errors in general. Honestly, we almost never talked about drugs at all. And I don't have a drug problem. So all I, what I did was, I had heard when I was locked up initially, when I initially got locked up, just before you get sentenced, they send a probation officer to talk. to you and when the probation officer talks to you one of the questions he asks you because they prepare a doc they prepare something to give to the judge to kind of tell them like who you are about your background so he can take those things into consideration when he's sentencing you not that they do but all of the guys in prison were telling me Matt listen if you want to get a year off you need to tell them that you had a drug problem so I told I told um

The probation officer, I had a drug program that I was, that I had been, I said I was hooked on an oxycodone. And that's what all the guys told me. And I told him that and he put it in there. So when I got sentenced, the judge told the Bureau of Prisons, this guy needs to be eligible to go into the ARDAP program and get a year off the program. So if you pass the program, you get a year off. Now, here's the problem. By the time I was going to go in the program, it's a nine-month program. you have to do nine months in the program and then you have to get four months halfway house so i felt

like look even if i go in the program and i finish it i'm not going to have i may have just enough time to get let's say i get the four months of halfway house but my fear was i would only get four months halfway house and as a result of only getting four months halfway house i wouldn't have enough time in the halfway house to save enough money to get my own apartment my own car that sort of thing Because I really did feel like I had no support from my family when I was locked up. My mom sent me money, but the bulk of the money that my mother was sending me was money that I had made while I was incarcerated writing guys' stories and selling, optioning their life rights and the story life rights. So I was getting money for that. And my mother would send me a little bit of money too.

So I wasn't getting a lot of money. And of course, my mom was in, you know, she was living in a retirement home. And so I didn't feel like it was just nowhere for me to go. So I really needed to stay in the halfway house as long as possible to save as much money so that I get myself back on my feet. I didn't know what I was going to be able to do for a living. I was very worried about that. My brother is not in a position to help me. My other sister, she's not in a position to help me.

And my other sister, I didn't think would be willing to help me at all. And I wasn't willing to ask her. So, and my mother wasn't in a financial position to help me. Like, nobody was in a position to help me. And I had really almost no money. You know, I was, had barely any money. And I keep in mind, my prison job pays me at this point, maybe $15 to $20 a month. So that's no money.

So when my counselor comes to me and says, look, Matt, we're going to send you to a camp. you have less than two years or you have roughly two years to go we're sending you to a camp I said you can't send me to a camp I'm going into Ardap well Ardap they don't have the Ardap program at all the camps

but they had it at the prison I was at so I and they were like okay well when are you planning on going and I said look I'm supposed to meet with Dr. Smith Dr. Smith is a woman that runs the Ardap program in the low at Coleman and I said I'm supposed to meet with

Dr. Smith next week. My counselor was like, oh, okay, well, that's cool. Let me know how that goes, so I'll hold off on putting you in for a camp. I immediately go to the computer, fill out a request to meet with Dr. Smith to be placed in the ARDAP program, explained to her that the judge had recommended it, and said I needed to meet with her as soon as possible. I didn't actually meet with her for probably a couple weeks. So two, three weeks later, I'm called into the office. I go in, she reads my pre-sentence report she sees that the judge recommended that i go she asked me you know if i if i was willing to sign in the program i said yes i am willing to sign in the program now the reason i wanted to sign in the program also by the way so here's the big thing

when you enter into a program like that like the art app program they also have something called it was called the free program if you enter into these kind of these programs that are offered by the Bureau of Prison, they put what's called a hold on you. And so you're held at one institution where they don't move you until you're complete, until you complete the program. The thing is, each time they put a hold on you,

it's for a year. So every year they have to refile to hold you there. So as soon as I knew as soon as I went in the ARDAP program, I knew within a month or two they put a hold on me. well I go to the program I sign in the program I go in there I'm I move from you know that I was in B I think I was in B4 B3 or B4 I was in unit B4 and I move to I want to say it's called it's a A2 so I was in B4 they moved me to A2 A2 is the Ardap program I get placed in a cell with a couple of guys One of the guy's name was a guy named Ledford, and one of the guys was, his name was Dave. Dave had one arm. Dave had lost his arm.

He was on, I want to say it was acid or LSD or something when he was younger and he was driving like a truck. And so he's driving and he passes out with his arm hanging out the window. and the truck drives off the road and it hits, it slides up against a tree. So it kind of, you know, slides along a tree and his arm gets yanked off. It actually was hanging. He said, well, it didn't get really yanked off. He said it was kind of hanging by just like the tendons, but he couldn't move it or anything.

So he kind of grabs his arm. He wakes up, grabs his arm. His girlfriend is beside him, and she's flipped out. crying and screaming he drives himself to the emergency room and gets out and then you know they go in there and the doctors look at it and they're like like there's nothing we can do and they just snip the cords and he lost his arm uh Dave was in there for selling meth Ledford I want to say Ledford was in there for selling meth also I don't know for sure he got a life sentence he had done like 15 years or something like that 10 15 years

and he had a life sentence and the judge no I'm sorry his lawyer had put in for to have his sentence commuted and Obama had commuted his sentence to like 20 years or 15 or 20 years and so as a result he went in

he was moved from the pen to the low he went into the drug program he had to complete the drug program before they let him out so he was those were my two cellies for the first part of Ardap So I start going to ARDAP, and you have to understand, I didn't need to go through the program. Like, everybody that was there, they were getting like the year off. But I didn't need the year off.

Like, I didn't want the year off because I wanted as much halfway house. And if you actually did the math, me getting a year halfway house was better for me, even though I had to do a couple more months in prison, didn't really matter. Now, the reason I didn't want to get moved, like I said, I don't know if I mentioned this. The reason I didn't want to get moved to a camp was because my mother was coming to see me every two weeks. And I knew if I got moved to a camp, I would never see her again. Like, she can't drive. The closest camp is four and a half, about four, four and a half hours away in Miami. And there's just no way I'm going to get moved there and she's going to be able to come see me.

And my sister and my brother basically said, like my mom was in her 80s at the time, like 87. 188 years old. I think she said 88. Anyway, she was about 87, 88 years old at that time. And they were like, listen, the only, the reason she's hanging on is for you to get out of prison. So I felt like if, like she lived to come see me every two weeks. So I thought if I get moved and she's not going to see me for a couple of years, like she's not going to make it. So I went into ARDAP and I start taking the program.

And, I mean, it honestly was not, like, it wasn't difficult because there's different phases of the program. You graduate, you know, like a phase one, phase two, I think there's four phases. So I sail through the phase one, because phase one is you're just working in a book and you're answering questions. And you have to understand, too, that because I didn't care whether I graduated or not, unlike the other participants in the program who are very concerned and working, worried about saying the right thing. I wasn't worried about saying the right thing. So I'm saying I'm being a complete lunatic. I'm filling out paperwork. You have to do these things called a they were like called RSAs like a rational self-analysis little things. And and so there were these little things you had to write every single day. You had to do an RSA. You had to fill out multiple. There's just multiple pages. in these books that are written at like a fifth grade level you have to fill out the paperwork and that they're they're doing stuff like I'll give you an example of some of my answers in these a rational self-analysis would be someone is screaming in the middle of the hallway and keep in mind art app is a quiet unit so you're never supposed to be screaming there's no yelling or screaming that that's a big deal so you're in art app and somebody's yelling down the hallway And that was one of the things I loved about that unit

It was very quiet As opposed to the other units Which were like living in hell So guys are screaming down the hallway Well, you would do a rational self-analysis Where you're pissed And your first thought is I'd like to jump up and hit this guy in the head

With a baseball bat Like I mean the first thing you think Is this piece of garbage Is screaming in front of my cell Like I'm trying to, I'm trying to read or something And so your first thought is to say you know hey motherfucker why don't you shut your fucking man you're that's your first analysis right like that's what the other inmates do like their first thought is the first thing that pops in their

mouth they scream and holler and they they get into a confrontation now a normal person thinks to himself i'd like to say that but i'm not going to because he he sees a typical person like a person watching this video most likely would think i wish this guy would be quiet i'd like to say something, but I'm not going to, because if he mouths off to me, then I mouth off to him. The next thing, you know, we're in a confrontation. If we get into a confrontation, then I end up having to go to the hole, or we get into a fist fight. Maybe I get hurt. Maybe I don't get hurt, but the other inmates tell or somebody sees me on a camera that we got into a fight, and I end up going to the hole. If I go to the hole, I have to drop out of the

program. If I drop out of the program, I'll lose the one year that I'm benefiting from this. so the best thing for me to do is for me to not say anything and go about my business he'll leave soon and that's the right thing to do so that's a so you have to write down these little they have like little things that you do and my rational self analysis would be my first thought you have to put your first thought is to scream at this guy my second thought is what are the consequences of that my third thought is what's the best thing to do how to respond to this, which is like to say nothing or to politely ask the person to move along or politely ask the person who they're looking for, maybe you can help them, that sort of thing. And then what are the benefits to behaving that way? So my, in that same scenario, I would say, I'd like to jump up and hit this, why is this guy screaming in front of myself? I'd like to hit him in the head with a baseball bat, which is not the thing to say. And then the second thing is, would then come back and say, no, if I do that, I'm going to end up getting another charge and I'll

never have to, I'll never be able to get out of prison and I'll have to deal with these idiots for my entire life. So then I say, no, the best thing to do is to simply say nothing and hope that this moron finds this guy without my help. And then the benefit to that is I will be able to leave this place and I will never have to deal with morons like this again. Now, keep in mind. mind, the way I wrote that is not the way to answer a rational self-analysis. Like the last two things I said are, one, you should help. And two, you should say, this is the, and I'm saying, if I ignore him, he'll go away and I don't ever, and I get to go out of prison and I never have to deal with an idiot like

this again. That's not what you're supposed to say. You're supposed to say a good thing, like I should ask to help him. and then if I help him I'll have learned a valuable lesson about how to help people and I will be able to go on and enter society and be a successful

citizen like that's what I'm supposed to say I don't say those things so I say this ridiculous thing and then of course when they read it later when your teacher reads it later she's like Mr. Cox this is not you really should have said this and I'm like really but that guy's an idiot

so I would have these arguments and guys in class would laugh and I got to be a real clown because the truth is, I don't care if I pass the first phase, if they, what they call refase me and make me start over it again. I don't care because I never want to leave this room. I never want to leave this unit. I want to stay here so I can see my mom every two weeks. Plus, I was writing other guys' stories. I'm still writing other stories. I want to stay at Coleman also because I want to continue to write these stories and finish the stories that I'm writing. So I'm writing ridiculous stories.

RSAs, I'm answering questions in the book where one of the questions I remember, it's like, one of the questions is my life in 10 years without drugs, you know, my life, my family life in 10 years if I continue to not use drugs and make rational decisions. And so I was, I remember I said my life in 10 years, my family life in 10 years without drugs will be, I will not have a family because I'll be getting out of prison in my late 40s and I don't plan on having any children so or any additional children. So my family life, there will really be no family life. It'll just be me and whoever I'm dating. So then it says, the next question was, your relationship in 10 years without drugs. And I said, I'm hoping to find a young, hot ex-stripper that's super hot that is with me

only because of my vast fortune. She and I have an arrangement. She's super hot, and I get to sleep with her because we have an arrangement. Next one is, what will your, your, your, like your professional life look like? And I said, I plan on going back into real estate and having a vast real estate fortune renting out rooming houses to low-income people that have no real option other than to pay me. So I say this. Then it says, what will your overall life look like in, oh, no, then it was your political, like what's your community life? And I said, there is no community life. I'm a pariah. I'll be getting out as a pariah, and I have no, I have no intention of doing anything but remaining a pariah for the rest of my life.

I'm good with it. So then it says, your overall life, what will it be like in 10 years? I said, in 10 years, my overall life is, I'll be dating my hot ex-stripper girlfriend, will be traveling the world, living off of my vast real estate fortune. And I plan on doing this. and I hope to go out in 20 or 30 years while having sex with her and I have a massive, massive heart attack.

Boom. That's what I turned into the teacher. This is not how you answer these questions, by the way. The funny thing is, is each teacher has two or three of these classes, right? With like 20, so they're basically each teacher has about, There's 150 people. So each teacher has maybe 50 people underneath them.

They have to read your work every single week. There's just no way for them to do it. Because I, maybe not in normal society, but in ARDAP or in prison, I come off like a fucking genius. Like, you have to understand that if the average IQ in the real world is roughly 100, the average IQ in prison has to be about 90. So if you have an above average IQ in the real world, you're a super bright guy. If you're fairly smart amongst normal society and you go to prison, you're a damn genius. I mean, you are way above genius. So in prison, I was like a rocket scientist.

And I, what happened is my, the teachers in the classes, I realized very quickly, they would hand in your book, they would review the book, and they'd give it back. Now, once or twice, I would be given a book and they would say, Cox, redo this, quit being funny. this isn't funny redo it and I do redo a page or two but eventually they stopped checking my work at all they would hand me my book back and say you're doing amazing work mr. Cox knowing damn well I had written stuff about dating strippers and I mean just you know robbing banks and I mean just like start like I had one like starting my own bank so that I could rob money from the Federal Reserve I I mean, it was just like outrageous, like going on the run and changing my appearance and taking over a small country. And, you know, I mean, just it was insanity to some of the stuff.

And I'm waiting for them to say something because I don't care. But they're not even looking at it. They're not reading my RSAs. They used to randomly pick people in the morning meeting. The morning meeting has 150 guys in it. And they would randomly pick people to read their RSAs. So guys would stand up and they'd say, yesterday, I was in the Chal Hall line. and they didn't have chicken

and the menu said they were going to have chicken and I thought this is ridiculous I really wanted chicken it makes me so mad but then I thought I'm lucky that I'm being given

a decent meal and they would read their thing and I would just be like I want to shoot myself and I used to think if they asked me to read my RSA what did I say yesterday

and I'd flip it open and I'd be like oh my God I can't read this like I'm talking about a teacher that one of the teachers there, one of the, they called them a drug treatment specialist, DTSs. And I'm talking about one of the DTSs. I'm talking about how she uses how she can't even speak proper English, but she tells everybody she's got a master's degree, but she didn't have

a master's. Like she was constantly lying about traveling and about doing like all of these amazing things. But the truth is, is that she didn't, it turns out later that I knew it, Listen, I knew at the moment she started talking. We later found out that she had been, this is a team, by the way, this is, this is someone who's a drug treatment specialist. She's ahead of all these, over all these inmates. She's basically like a pathological liar. And she's lying about having a master's degree and how the Bureau of Prisons had come to her and asked her to run the whole program. But she didn't want the responsibility.

She gave it, gave it to Dr. Smith. Now that's not true Because later it comes out That Dr. Smith ends up One of the inmates mentions all this to Dr. Smith And Dr. Smith starts laughing And says she doesn't have a master's jury They never offered this job to her

I don't know why she keeps saying that I've mentioned it to her several times She says she always kind of denies it And she I don't know why she keeps saying that Like you've got one of your One of the people you work with Who's like blatantly lying And everybody knows it

So I mentioned this in my RSA It would have been hilarious if I had to have stood up and had to read it. I didn't. Anyway, it's just that the program was so ridiculous. And the hardest thing for me during the program was staying awake, like really having to stay awake. But it was a great unit. And I stayed in it, and I participated to a degree. And I had many, many times where I was taken aside and told that I wasn't taking the

curriculum seriously and that I needed to step it up and I needed to help my fellow inmates and I needed this and I would just like right right right yeah I'm going to work on that and and that I wouldn't do anything well after about five months of this my counselor one day I go to my counselor and I said hey this was another counselor this was the ARDAT counselor so I go to him and I said hey have they put the management variable on me yet and I asked him that several times. Like every few weeks, I would say, hey, have they done that yet? He'd say, I put it in. They haven't put it

on you yet, though. So one day I'm walking by and I see him, I go, hey, I said, whatever. He was like, Cox, I know what you're going to ask me. He said, they put it on. He said, I checked yesterday. They put it on you yesterday. He said, you have a management variable on you. It went on a few days ago. He said, you are

locked into this facility for the next year. And I went. Nice. I immediately went and filled out a cop out. and went and slid it under Dr. Smith's door, which said that I wanted it out of the unit. I wanted to drop out of the program. I was done with the whole thing.

Nice knowing you. Appreciate you later. It took her two or three weeks before she finally moved me. Normally, when someone tries to sign out of the ARDAP unit, Dr. Smith would call them in there and convince me. them to stay she didn't even try and keep me she even try and keep me to ask me to stay or anything along those lines why I have no idea I'm not sure she I definitely know that she did not realize that I wanted I only was in the unit to get the management variable

because I never told anyone that like the only person that knew that in the whole compound was probably my buddy Nico and a friend of mine named Pierre Rossini Pete So, anyway, so like two, three weeks later, she signs me out of the unit. I go back to my old unit, and I go into the old unit, and they put me in a fishbowl. I remember they put me in the fishbowl. So, you know what's funny about this whole thing is that a month before, about, I'm sorry, about, okay, so let me put this way, about two months into being an art app, I got called to, my, the unit, no wait, my case manager, my, no, no, the unit manager, unit manager called me in and he said, Cox, I just got an email from Grand Prairie. Now, Grand Prairie is the, where like

the head of the BOP is, like they do all the stuff for, they move people around and they're the ones that are in charge of, like, basically it's like the records office. So he said, I got an email from them and they sent me a file on you and it says that you owe $6 million in restitution. And I was like, right, right. Now, keep in mind, if you've been watching the video, you know that when I first got into the Bureau of Prisons, I convinced my case manager, my unit manager, and the, what did they call it? Oh, and my counselor, I convinced them in the medium when I first got there that I was

I didn't owe rest. I didn't have to pay my restitution while I was incarcerated, which is unheard of. I convinced four or five different counselors after that of the same thing. It's just complete bullshit. Like there's nothing to prove it. I just talked to them and explained it in such a way that they believed me. Finally, this case, this counselor, no, I think it was a case man. This case manager, this guy, whatever, this guy, he says, I got this thing from Grand Prairie. You owe $6 million. You've never made a payment. And I was like, right, right.

And I remember thinking, is there any way for me to convince him? And I just, the look at his face, and he actually had my file in front of him, and it's opened, and you can see the judgment commitment. You can see clearly, like I've been telling these people that if you just open the file and look at my judgment commitment, you'll see that I don't owe them. money and you'll see and and they never did like they was like oh yeah yeah we'll take a look at it we'll take a look at it and they just never did and he had it right there and i there's nothing i can say and i was like right right and he said so but you're not on frp refusal which means you're on it's like the

federal restitution program that governs you to pay the money back he's like like if you don't pay they can put you on refusal and then you don't get a job or you only pay two dollars a month or you don't get like to get into a two-man cell like they they put you through hell like like all kinds of stuff like they're not you're not allowed to go to commissary like there's all kinds of stuff and yet somehow or another I wasn't paying but I wasn't on FRP refusal and he goes but you're not an FRP refusal and I looked at him right he said why is that I went I don't know and he goes but you know you owe six million I went right he goes you know you owe restitution I went right and he said but you're not paying I said right he goes why not I said nobody's

ever mentioned it to me. He says, nobody's ever asked you to pay. I said, no. He said, but you know you owe it. I said, I know I owe it. But I've never brought it up and they've never brought it up. He was, man, it's been almost 10 years. No, no, it's been over 10 years. He's just been over 10 years. You know you owe that money. I said, yeah, granted, I owe the money. I get it, but nobody brought it up and I'm not going to be able to pay off $6 million dollars anyway so he says listen based on the calculation of how much money you get in every month that money that's been sent to your account he starts doing the calculation right pulls out a calculator and he comes back and he says you have to pay two hundred dollars a month

and i go you're out of your mind said i'm not paying two hundred dollars a month i don't have it he said well you get in two to three hundred dollars a month i said yeah listen i said i i'm not paying that amount of money. And by the way, if you didn't pay, you got kicked out of ARDAP. Like if you don't pay, if you refuse to pay, you cannot go into ARDAP. So now I'm not in a position to even not pay to say, no, I won't sign, I won't let you take the money out of my account. I can't say that because I need to say an ARDAP because they hadn't placed the management

variable on me yet. So I sat there and I went, we went back and forth, back and forth, arguing back and forth. And finally we get down to it to the point where he says like 150 bucks, 150 bucks where I'm kicking you out of ARDAP. And I went and I thought, how long will it take them to put the management variable on me? And I thought a few months. Take a few months. So I went, I'll do 150. But I need you to give me a few months to arrange it on the outside so that

people will send me money in. And you have to understand that when he told me, I told him, I said, look, man, I'm making like $17 a month at my job here. And I said, the person sending money into me is my mother out of her social security stifen. I go, you're telling me you want my mother to pay $200 a month? And he goes, yeah, I do. Tell mom she's got to pay. And that's just what assholes they are. Like my mother's sending me in money. You want to take my mother's money. Yes, I do. Like, they don't give a shit. So we argued back and forth, got it down to 150. And I said, I have to figure out how to arrange it so that I get some friends and family to send me in enough money in order for me to pay this every month. And he goes, I said, so can you give me like

four or five months? He goes, I can give you a month. I go, no, no, no, no. I said, in that case, sign me out of R-Dap. He goes, how much time do you? I go, I need at least four months. He goes, three. I'll give you three months. And I go, okay. So three months. later, my counselor tells me another counselor, not the same jerk off, another counselor is the one that tells me, guess what, you got a management variable placed on you. And then I sign myself out of ARDAP. Dr. Smith signs me out. So at the same time, I go to the new unit. I remove all the money out of my inmate account and I place it on the phone. so there's no money it's all on my phone so there's no money in my account when the $150

hits and boom I'm on our frp refusal so they took out 17 or able like it just so happened that I took out almost all the money and I got like $17 my paycheck and then they took out like the 17 bucks so that I they take out whatever it is 20 bucks they take out like $20 or so out of the account and then I get called in my I'm now at the old unit my old unit they get called in from the new counselor that I now have, which is this woman, the same one that told me about that she was going to send me to a camp. And she, they called me in and they say, listen, you, you missed your FRP refusal. I said, well, I wouldn't say I missed it. Who's, you know, you hit me for 20 bucks. And she said, yeah, but you removed all your money just beforehand. Didn't you know that was coming out? I said, of course I knew it was coming out. I don't want to pay it. And she was like, oh, well, then I'm going to stick you in. She says, I'm sticking you in the fish bowl, which is where they've got like 12 guys living in one room. But I was already in the fishbowl. So she goes, I'm going to put you in the fishbowl. And I go, I'm already in the fishbowl.

I've been here like a week or a couple of days. And she's, well, you can't get a two-man room. I said, like, I care about a two-man room. She said, well, I don't know. I don't know what you're going to do. I'm going to put you on refusal and you're not going to be able to make any money at work. I said, I work. Like, the job I have paid $17.

So what are you going to do? You're going to drop me to $2 or $3. a month? Like, that's not going to change anything. It's still a better deal than paying $150. And she sat there and she said, well, you know, you need to figure this out. And I said, I will. I'll work on it. So I leave. And keep on mind, at this point, I'm teaching the real estate class. So the bulk of the money that I'm getting to pay for my, pay for coffee and creamer and things like that are from guys paying in my real estate class. They're paying me to give them certificates. So anyway, I go back to the unit. So I'm at the unit. Everything's fine. Two or three months go by.

and my counselor comes to me one day. She goes, Cox, and I said, yeah, what's up? It's been three months. I said, yeah, what's going on? And she says, I'm going to put you in to have you move to the camp in Miami. And I went, what? She said, yeah, I'm going to have you moved to Miami. I said, no, no, no, no.

I said, I have a management variable on me. She was, I know, I saw that. She said, I'm going to ask Graham, I'm going to ask Grand Prairie to remove it. And I went, why? I said, it's good for a year. She said, well, yeah, but under certain circumstances, you could ask them to be removed, for them to be removed. I didn't know that.

Nobody had ever told me that. And she said, they're pushing really hard for us to get people to be moved to a camp. She said, the truth is, Cox, you came into the system. Almost like 10, 10, over 10 years ago, you should have never gone to the medium or gone to a camp or gone to the low. You really should have been in a camp the whole time. If it weren't for the amount of time you had She goes, you would have never been

It ended up here So I was like, wow, that sucks I said, man, I said, that's messed up And I went, shoot, I said, but truth is, I said, I don't think you can Can you move me when I'm in Ardap? And she goes, she looked at me, she was like, well, no, but you're not in an art app. I said, no, no, but I'm going back to Ardap next week.

She says, you are? I said, yeah, yeah, I've already met with Dr. Smith. She's going to put me in the next program in the next class. And she goes, oh, I didn't. know that? I said, yeah. And she said, oh, okay, well, I'm sorry. In that case, yeah, I won't do any of that. I didn't realize you were going back to Ardap. I said, yeah, I have a problem. I have a real problem. I have a drug problem. And I need to, I can't go back on the street like this. I said, I'll be back on

drugs. And I really feel very apprehensive and I'm nervous. And she goes, no, I totally understand. I understand. It makes sense completely. I said, okay, thanks. So I immediately go to the computer, and I send an email to Dr. Smith. Dr. I changed my mind. I got a real issue here. I need to go back to Ardach. So she signs me up to come back and meet with her. So I walk in and went into her office. And it's just supposed to be like a preliminary. I thought it's like a preliminary.

What's going on? Are you sure you want to come back? Like that's what she typically does. But this time when I go back, I walk in, I sit down. There's like the three DTSs are there. So there's three DTSs and Dr. Smith. And I walk in, I sit down. I'm like, hey, what's going on?

She said, well, I think we need to talk to you. And I said, what's that? about what? She goes, she was, why should I let you back into ARDAP? She said, you, when you were here last time, you, you never took it seriously. And she goes, why would I let you back in? And I remember thinking, oh my God, like, she might not let me back in. Like, that wasn't even, to me, that wasn't even a consideration. Like, of course you're going to let me back in. Every crackhead that drops out of the program gets to come back right away. And she said, I mean, Matt, she was, Mr. Cox, she's, you're not taking the, seriously at all and I went well and she said I mean give me one give me a one good reason why I would let you in and she keep in mind this chick is super smart and I'm terrified I now think oh my God she's not going to let me in and they're all looking at me like yeah yeah yeah why would we let you in and I went I said um I remember thinking bro you better dig deep you better come up with some shit. Like, you better come up with something to tell this woman. She's not going to let you back in. You're never going to see your mother alive again. You're in the middle of writing multiple stories. Your mom's, your mom is never going to be able to come see you. You're going to get moved. Like, you fucked up. And I went, you better to dig deep. And I, so I went, I said, honestly, you want the truth? And she goes, yeah, yeah, I'd like, I'd like to know. She's irritated.

And I went, the truth is, Dr. Smith, I said, I don't know that I've got much of a drug problem. I know, but I definitely know I have a criminal thinking problem. And I said, do you know, I said, I just did over 10 years. I go, over 10 years, I'm about to get out of prison. I said, and when I, I lay in bed at night and I can't sleep and I think what's going to become of me, what am I going to do? How am I going to survive? I said, you know what?

What gives me comfort? And she goes, what? I go, fraud. Fraud gives me comfort. When I can't sleep at night and I worry about what's going to happen, you know what I go to sleep? I said, I lay in bed and I start thinking to myself, you can commit a crime. You can commit fraud.

And I start planning a scam in my head. And I think, okay, first thing, where are you going to get the stolen identities? How are you going to steal them? Where are you going to have the credit cards mailed to? How are you going to find the address to get the cards mailed? Once you get the cards, how are you going to go about getting – I said, do you understand? I start formulating a scam. where I can steal hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

It's so comforting to me. I don't even get to the point where I'm removing the money from the ATMs. And I go straight to sleep. It's that comforting to me. I said, now, I don't know if that's normal behavior or if that's things that people think about, but I know that I can't leave this instance. go back on the street with no money thinking the way I'm thinking.

And if I have to come back into this program and take shit from all of you guys for the next nine months to try and correct that behavior, I said, then that's what I have to do because I can't get out like this. And she looked at me and she went, okay, listen, I think we can get you in the next class um where are you located right now okay well the next class starts in three weeks and i we have an opening i think that we're going to move so-and-so uh how much time before you get out and i was like and listen i literally when she she bought it so well i almost started laughing i literally when she's when she goes okay i think we can get you into the next class i i literally put my hand over my mouth because i i could And stop smiling.

I almost burst into tears laughing. And everybody, all three DTSs were sitting there staring at me like, oh my God, this guy has some real problems. And so I was like, I had to sit there for a minute and be like, get a hold of yourself, motherfucker. You were going to fuck this up by laughing. And she just bought it, like just, just complete headlining singing. She just over the top, just bought it. I couldn't have asked for a better result. And I sat there and I went, yeah, I'm in, I'm in a unit B4 and I've, I'm, I've got about 18 months to go before I'm released.

And she said, listen, no, not 18 months. I had, I had, matter of fact, I know exactly how much time I had. I had, oh, shoot, I had that, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, it wasn't 18 months. It was about 15 months. I had about 15 months to go. So it was just enough time for me to, like, complete the program and get a five or six, you know, four or five months, which you had to spend four months in the halfway house. Now, I only had enough, I would have only ended up getting two or three months off my sentence. And she said to me, she said, you're only going to be able to get, because you're so close to the door, you'll only be able to get a few months.

off of your sentence. And I said, you know what? I said, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. I don't care. I don't care about the year off. What I care about is getting my head right. And she said, no, I understand.

I understand. Stop judging me. So within two weeks, she's moved me back into ARDAP and I'm going through it again. I'm writing ridiculous stuff in the books. I'm, oh, I didn't even explain the morning meeting.

In the morning meeting, one of the things in ARDAP is you have to do what they call holding your peers accountable. So what happens is in the morning meeting, there's 150 guys. There's 75 guys on one side and 75 on the other, and all your chairs are facing each other. And they have like, it's like an hour and a half long morning meeting. And so they have different phases like, hey, they pick random people to read from their RSAs. They pick random people to talk about certain things. They pick random people.

They have something called the word of the day. So you have to stand up and talk about like the word of the day. And the word of the day might be like success. And you stand up and you go and you look at you, success. What success means to me is getting out of ARDAP and being a successful person and reintegrating into society and being a good person and not being on drugs or having criminal thinking errors anymore and being a good father to my family. and being a good citizen. That is what success means to me. And then you sit down and everybody goes,

and they all clap. And maybe somebody stands up and says, they do corrections. Oh, I noticed when you said success, you didn't mention that you should also do this. Or I noticed that you didn't mention this or you did say this, but you said it like this,

like it was a bad thing. And so a guy stand up and they correct, listen, it's, I can't even talk about it without it's, it's it's childish but so is prison so you do this thing well one of the things that they did was they had a they had something called a pull-ups you had to do pull-ups and guys that weren't in the program would say that pulling someone up is snitching on them and by the most purest definition it is But the way Ardap explained it was it wasn't snitching. You were holding your peers accountable.

So, and all, by the way, everybody did them. So all the gangsters that I ain't snitching on nobody, I ain't, I ain't this, I ain't that, I ain't doing this, fuck that shit, fuck that. They all did pull-ups. You have to stand up and you pull someone up. And every day there would be, sometimes there would be 10 pull-ups, sometimes there would be two. But there was always pull-ups. So the way a pull-up went was You would stand up and you'd say

I gave you one You would go You know The guy would stand up and he'd say My name is John Smith I'm in I'm in phase two I'm in green group

Because you have different groups In different phases I'm in phase two green group I'd like to pull up Mr. Johnson And then Mr. Johnson would He'd be sitting five rows away And all of a sudden, he would, he, they always did this.

They always looked around like, me? He's pulling me up. Does he mean me, Mr. Johnson? Yeah, you're the only Mr. Johnson here. Yeah. And he's, they always stand up real. What's happening? And then, of course, the other guy would say,

oh, Mr. Johnson, yesterday we were in the chow hall, and I was walking out of the chow hall. And I noticed that, that you, you had come. I saw you take a. piece of chicken and put it in a plastic bag and then I saw you put it like tuck it in your pants and then you walked out of the chow hall and you walked by the guard and he was he was he was patting somebody else down and you just kept walking and you brought I saw I watch you walk bring it all the way back to to the unit and I know that you you cooked it up last night and you

ate the chicken and you you that's stealing you're suffering from and then he would tell you the thinking errors that you were suffering from and the thinking errors there's like eight, nine different thinking errors and like, and he would say, you're suffering from super optimism, which would be, you're just overly optimistic that you believe you can't get caught. And you're suffering from, and he would name these different thinking errors that you have, like you're suffering from this and this. And then he would say, uh, the way I want you to work on it is I want you to work on it by, I want you to do five RSAs and I want you to come to the morning meeting tomorrow and read those RSAs, and, you know, that's all.

And then he'd sit down, and then two other people had to stand up and comment. So they'd already, do we have any comments? And then everybody, people would raise their hand. And they'd raise their hand and they would comment and they would stand up, they'd go, oh, yes, Mr. Johnson, I believe that you, you weren't taking into consideration. And then they give you things to do. I believe that you should have to go and volunteer five hours and help sweep the, and then they'd give you five, you know, something to do.

And then the next guy would give it. So now you're sitting there, you're like, I got, like, I got, like, three things I have. I have three different, like, punishments because I took some chicken out of the chow hall because I was hungry. You know, and I get it. Like, that's stealing technically, even in prison, it's stealing. Like, you have, you're supposed to go into the chow hall, you eat your food, you leave.

So I get it. But these pull-ups became a major, major issue for people. And you have to do it in a way that, you know, there was a standard kind of a curriculum or like a process that you had to go through say certain things. And you couldn't get angry or upset. And then, of course, Mr. Johnson has to stand up and he has to basically apologize for the whole thing. You know, and then he has to resay all of the things that he's, what he did wrong and all the things he's supposed to do.

The problem is some of these pull-ups are so minor, like guys would pull someone up because I noticed last night when you were brushing your teeth, you didn't shut off the water. And that's wasteful. And you're not taking, you know, and you're suffering from, and then there was something where you're supposed to be looking out for. your fellow man and by not shutting off the water you're not looking out for your fellow man your fellow inmates and you're not and so then next thing you know it's like i didn't shut off the water i let the water run for 30 seconds while i was brushing my teeth and now i just now i have to go sweep the compound for the next three days i have to do all of these different things that they have you doing it's like jesus christ like are you serious like this is that right like what are you talking about

And guys are doing this left and right. So this is happening every single day. Anyway, this whole thing. This time, the problem with me going in ARDAP this time is it wasn't like I was in there for like three or four months. Like this time, like it went on and on and on. Like they did not put the management variable on me for a long time. And so the longer I'm going, and by the way, things are like, you would get, you would have assignments that you had to do. So there were certain things.

Let me give you an example. You're supposed to go to AA every day. Every day you're supposed to go to like an AA meeting. You're also supposed to take these workshops. So I took one of each workshop with a different person and I then got a hold of the sign out sheet with the different workshops. and I just copied the guy's signature over and over and over again. Now, they're supposed to compare the two for a master roster and this roster. But I figured, fuck it, they're probably got a good chance.

They won't do that. And so they never did. So I took one or two workshops and never took another workshop. I never went to AA because if you didn't go to the first AA, I figured out pretty quickly that they make the master roster based on who shows up the very first day. So I didn't show up ever. I never went to AA. half the times I was in the different yeah listen it was it was it was ridiculous like I mean I didn't take the whole thing seriously I think I got pulled up one time or twice I got pulled up twice I never did my assignment um that I was told did you have to do this you have to do this you have to do this I don't think I ever did any of those the next time I got pulled up Dr. Smith shut it down

because she could see how pissed I was because the guy pulled me up for something I didn't even do it was like completely bullshit it was a complete bullshit like I like he started an argument with me I get into an argument with this guy in line and the guy completely just lies he lies about the whole thing and so when he pulls me up he only pulled me up to it's called basically it's um it's like uh uh there he's he's trying he's doing a preemptive pull up because he wants to pull me. up because he's afraid I'm going to pull him up. And so he pulls me up and just blatantly says that I started an argument with him in line and that I said this and I said this and I said this. And the whole thing falls apart very, very quickly. So listen, I wrote a whole book about ARDAP and how hilarious the experience was. So I'm not going to get into all the stuff. There was at one point, there was a huge ordeal with Dr. Smith and I,

in the middle of the morning meeting and it was outrageous like we get into a we get into a full blown argument and I've got guys pulling on me telling me to sit down and stop and I don't stop I just have this full blown argument with Dr. Smith in the middle of the morning meeting

the other thing was that Dr. Smith was constantly calling me in her office and having talks with me about my son about my ex-wife about my mother, my father my being my upbringing my crime like everything it was it was horrible like she the problem is the second time I went in she actually took interest in me and that was a mistake like letting having this woman take interest in you was it was emotionally it was a roller coaster because she has a PhD she's extremely

smart and I've known people with PhDs that still come off kind of like idiots like they're clinically they're they're sharp the problem with her was she's not just clinically intelligent. She's not book smart. She's just in general a very, very intelligent person. And as a result of that, she very quickly categorized me and who I was and what my issues were. And she was constantly calling me in the office and running me through the ringer to the point where I was in tears almost every time I walked into her office. I despised having to go in that office. It was so bad, if anybody knows Pablo's dog, you know, when the dog, when it hears the bell, it just starts, it just starts

saliva, you know, it just starts creating saliva, like it immediately starts drooling because it hears the bell so it knows it's going to be fed. It got so bad that when I heard Dr. Smith say my name, my eyes would start the water up because it was that emotionally draining to go in there. I was in tears every time. Like, she would say my name and immediately I would start to well up. Before I didn't even get to the door. So, anyway,

it was, it was a rough, it was a rough, um, six, six months. Like I did like almost a year in art app. Never graduated. Because finally, my counselor said, Cox, guess what? Your

management variable was just placed on you. Oh my God. Thank you. God, I immediately went and grabbed a cop out, rode up, I want to be left out, put it under the door, and I'd say two days later, Dr. Smith called me in her office, and I walked in and I sat down and she goes, Cox, why are you leaving? I said, you know, I just can't. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm done. I've learned everything I have. I'm good. And she went, you're doing really well. The truth is I wasn't doing well. I wasn't doing well. I wasn't doing. into the work i wasn't filling out the paperwork i was so it was like i was not barely participating but you have to think the first and second phase really first second and i think it's the i think it's three phases or four like the first and second phase they're basically trying to get you to not be just a neanderthal like to say things like thank you and i appreciate it and and to be a decent

person is basically if you can use silverware by the second phase you're passing art at so you know you have to memorize the material and stuff but that wasn't difficult for me to to do like i know guys that that spent the whole a whole two months trying to memorize the phase two material and i sat down in two days and memorized all the cards everything across the board um passing the tests weren't what weren't an issue was it was it was like you know like don't lie don't cheat don't steal hey you passed but these guys they they couldn't seem to get it so it wasn't that difficult. But I just told her, look, I just can't do it. And she said, yeah, but you know, I said, look, the bottom line is I said, let's face it. I said, I want to drop out before I complete the program because I don't want to get the two. She was, you're going to get three months off your sentence. I said, I don't want three months off my sentence. I said, because if I, if I fuck up and I come back to prison, I'm going to need the whole year. And if I take the three months, you can't get three months. You can only get it once. So if I were to come back to prison and try and do Ardap again, I couldn't do it again.

I couldn't get a year off. I said, so I'm going to take three months instead of a year. And she goes, assuming you come back to prison, I said, look, we both know I'm coming back to prison. We both know that. And she goes, Cox, don't say that. I said, I'm just saying, we both know there's a good chance I'm coming back. I said, so the truth is, I said, let me go. Just let me go.

And she was upset and irritated about it. And she signed the thing and said, it's fine. You can go. And I actually had a couple of the other DTSs trying to talk me out of it. But, you know, I'm done. And I told them, too. I said, I'd rather not get the three months and just get me. more time in the halfway house.

And that's what happened. They put me in for the halfway house and I got seven, seven and a half months halfway house. And it took a month or so for me to get the halfway house and for me to basically, you know, be in a position where I was going to be leaving. I appreciate you watching this video. Please do me a favor and subscribe. Hit the like button. hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this

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